When we come home at night and close the door,
Standing together in the shadowy room,
Safe in our own love and the gentle gloom,
Glad of familiar wall and chair and floor,

Glad to leave far below the clanging city;
Looking far downward to the glaring street
Gaudy with light, yet tired with many feet,
In both of us wells up a wordless pity;

Men have tried hard to put away the dark;
A million lighted windows brilliantly
Inlay with squares of gold the winter night,
But to us standing here there comes the stark
Sense of the lives behind each yellow light,
And not one wholly joyous, proud, or free.


Lights – Sara Teasdale (1885 - 1933)


SAY not the struggle naught availeth,	
The labour and the wounds are vain,	
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,	
And as things have been they remain.	

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;	
It may be, in yon smoke conceal’d,	
Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,	
And, but for you, possess the field.	

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,	
Seem here no painful inch to gain,	
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,	
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.	

And not by eastern windows only,	
When daylight comes, comes in the light;	
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!	
But westward, look, the land is bright!

Say Not The Struggle Naught Availeth - Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861)

A Finland Love Song

I saw the moon rise clear
O'er hills and vales of snow
Nor told my fleet reindeer
The track I wished to go.
Yet quick he bounded forth;
For well my reindeer knew
I've but one path on earth—
The path which leads to you.

The gloom that winter cast,
How soon the heart forgets,
When summer brings, at last,
Her sun that never sets!
So dawned my love for you;
So, fixt thro' joy and pain,
Than summer sun more true,
'Twill never set again.


I Saw The Moon Rise Clear - Thomas Moore (1779 - 1852)

The Camper - E. Pauline Johnson

Night 'neath the northern skies, lone, black, and grim:
Naught but the starlight lies 'twixt heaven, and him.

Of man no need has he, of God, no prayer;
He and his Deity are brothers there.

Above his bivouac the firs fling down
Through branches gaunt and black, their needles brown.

Afar some mountain streams, rockbound and fleet,
Sing themselves through his dreams in cadence sweet,

The pine trees whispering, the heron's cry,
The plover's passing wing, his lullaby.

And blinking overhead the white stars keep
Watch o'er his hemlock bed - his sinless sleep.


The Camper - E. Pauline Johnson (1861 - 1913)

Others because you did not keep
That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;

Yet always when I look death in the face,
When I clamber to the heights of sleep,
Or when I grow excited with wine,
Suddenly I meet your face.


A Deep - Sworn Vow - William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939)

On the wooden deck of the wooden Junk, silent, alone, we lie,
With silver foam about the bow, and a silver moon in the sky:
A glimmer of dimmer silver here, from the anklets round your feet,
Our lips may close on each other's lips, but never our souls may meet.

For though in my arms you lie at rest, your name I have never heard,
To carry a thought between us two, we have not a single word.
And yet what matter we do not speak, when the ardent eyes have spoken,
The way of love is a sweeter way, when the silence is unbroken.

As a wayward Fancy, tired at times, of the cultured Damask Rose,
Drifts away to the tangled copse, where the wild Anemone grows;
So the ordered and licit love ashore, is hardly fresh and free
As this light love in the open wind and salt of the outer sea.

So sweet you are, with your tinted cheeks and your small caressive hands,
What if I carried you home with me, where our Golden Temple stands?
Yet, this were folly indeed; to bind, in fetters of permanence,
A passing dream whose enchantment charms because of its trancience.

Life is ever a slave to Time; we have but an hour to rest,
Her steam is up and her lighters leave, the vessel that takes me west;
And never again we two shall meet, as we chance to meet to-night,
On the Junk, whose painted eyes gaze forth, in desolate want of sight.


And what is love at its best, but this? Conceived by a passing glance,
Nursed and reared in a transient mood, on a drifting Sea of Chance.
For rudderless craft are all our loves, among the rocks and the shoals,
Well we may know one another's speech, but never each other's souls.

Give here your lips and kiss me again, we have but a moment more,
Before we set the sail to the mast, before we loosen the oar.
Good-bye to you, and my thanks to you, for the rest you let me share,
While this night drifted away to the Past, to join the Nights that Were.


Hira-Singh's Farewell To Burmah - Laurence Hope (1865 - 1904)

When I'm at gran'dad's on the farm,
I hear along 'bout six o'clock,
Just when I'm feelin' snug an' warm,
"Ho, Bobby, come and feed your stock."

I jump an' get into my clothes;
It's dark as pitch, an' shivers run
All up my back. Now, I suppose
Not many boys would think this fun.

But when we get out to the barn
The greedy pigs begin to squeal,
An' I throw in the yellow corn,
A bushel basket to the meal.

Then I begin to warm right up,
I whistle "Yankee Doodle" through,
An' wrastle with the collie pup—
And sometimes gran'dad whistles too.

The cow-shed door, it makes a din
Each time we swing it open wide;
I run an' flash the lantern in,
There stand the shorthorns side by side.


Their breathin' makes a sort of cloud
Above their heads—there's no frost here.
"My beauties," gran'dad says out loud,
"You'll get your breakfasts, never fear."

When up I climb into the loft
To fill their racks with clover hay,
Their eyes, all sleepy like and soft,
A heap of nice things seem to say.

The red ox shakes his curly head,
An' turns on me a solemn face;
I know he's awful glad his shed
Is such a warm and smelly place.

An' last of all the stable big,
With harness hanging on each door,
I always want to dance a jig
On that old musty, dusty floor.

It seems so good to be alive,
An' tendin' to the sturdy grays,
The sorrels, and old Prince, that's five—
An' Lightfoot with her coaxing ways.

My gran'dad tells me she is mine,
An' I'm that proud! I braid her mane,
An' smooth her sides until they shine,
An' do my best to make her vain.

When we have measured oats for all,
Have slapped the grays upon the flanks,
An' tried to pat the sorrels tall,
An' heard them whinny out their thanks,

We know it's breakfast time, and go
Out past the yellow stacks of straw,
Across the creek that used to flow,
But won't flow now until a thaw.

Behind the trees the sky is pink,
The snow drifts by in fat white flakes,
My gran'dad says: "Well, Bob, I think
There comes a smell of buckwheat cakes."


Chore Time - Jean McKishnie Blewett (1862 - 1934)

Deus Terminus is section 9 of Grahame's "Pagan Papers"

www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5319

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Grahame

Deus Terminus - Kenneth Grahame ( 1859 - 1932 )

Ah me!
Am I the swain
That late from sorrow free
Did all the cares on earth disdain?
And still untouched, as at some safer games,
Played with the burning coals of love, and beauty's flames?
Was't I could dive, and sound each passion's secret depth at will?
And from those huge o'erwhelmings rise, by help of reason still?
And am I now, O heavens! for trying this in vain,
So sunk that I shall never rise again?
Then let despair set sorrow's string,
For strains that doleful be;
And I will sing,
Ah me!

But why,
O fatal time,
Dost thou constrain that I
Should perish in my youth's sweet prime?
I, but awhile ago, (you cruel powers!)
In spite of fortune, cropped contentment's sweetest flowers,
And yet unscornèd, serve a gentle nymph, the fairest she,
That ever was beloved of man, or eyes did ever see!
Yea, one whose tender heart would rue for my distress;
Yet I, poor I! must perish ne'ertheless.
And (which much more augments my care)
Unmoanèd I must die,
And no man e'er
Know why.

Thy leave,
My dying song,
Yet take, ere grief bereave
The breath which I enjoy too long,
Tell thou that fair one this: my soul prefers
Her love above my life; and that I died her's:
And let him be, for evermore, to her remembrance dear,
Who loved the very thought of her whilst he remained here.
And now farewell! thou place of my unhappy birth,
Where once I breathed the sweetest air on earth;
Since me my wonted joys forsake,
And all my trust deceive;
Of all I take
My leave.

Farewell!
Sweet groves, to you!
You hills, that highest dwell;
And all you humble vales, adieu!
You wanton brooks, and solitary rocks,
My dear companions all! and you, my tender flocks!
Farewell my pipe, and all those pleasing songs, whose moving strains
Delighted once the fairest nymphs that dance upon the plains!
You discontents, whose deep and over-deadly smart
Have, without pity, broke the truest heart.
Sighs, tears, and every sad annoy,
That erst did with me dwell,
And all other joys,
Farewell!

Adieu!
Fair shepherdesses!
Let garlands of sad yew
Adorn your dainty golden tresses.
I, that loved you, and often with my quill,
Made music that delighted fountain, grove, and hill;
I, whom you loved so, and with a sweet and chaste embrace.
Yea, with a thousand rather favours, would vouchsafe to grace,
I now must leave you all alone, of love to plain;
And never pipe, nor never sing again!
I must, for evermore, be gone;
And therefore bid I you,
And every one,
Adieu!

I die!
For, oh! I feel
Death's horrors drawing nigh,
And all this frame of nature reel.
My hopeless heart, despairing of relief,
Sinks underneath the heavy weight of saddest grief;
Which hath so ruthless torn, so racked, so tortured every vein,
All comfort comes too late to have it ever cured again.
My swimming head begins to dance death's giddy round;
A shuddering chillness doth each sense confound;
Benumbed is my cold sweating brow
A dimness shuts my eye.
And now, oh! now,
I die! 

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